Hi, I’m Laur, I’m in my mid-thirties (wow, when did that happen?), a software developer from Romania, currently living in the Netherlands. I found this site, as many others, via MoR, and I’ve been lurking for a while now—I’m subscribed to the RSS feed and slowly working my way through the sequences.
When young (and arguably foolish), I’ve made a few “follow your heart’ kind of decisions that resulted in significant damage to my personal life, finances and career. For the past seven years I’ve been working my way out of that hole mainly by analysing and double-checking my personal choices in a rational way and it has paid off in a big way. I learned that the heart does not think, and the first instinct is good for keeping you out of the reach of lions, but worthless when contemplating a complicated problem with far-reaching consequences.
I personally believe in a humanist approach to rationality, where people are taught, helped and guided along this path. I’d rather live in a world where most people are rational most of the time than in one where some people are rational all of the time. Working towards that end, I’ve recommended LW (and MoR) to most people I know.
A low-cost alternative is to have a fridge with a glass door. If you have privacy concerns or want to be extra fancy, you can use smart glass, although I would expect that it would raise its price significantly.
Seeing inside the fridge without opening the door is also good for energy conservation.